Being 20-something and being a college-aged woman is all about finding yourself, figuring out who you are, and becoming who you want to be. Doing so usually tends to end in a lot of late-night phone calls to mom, lying awake in bed waiting for the sun to rise, and for me, scouring the pages of my Bible and pleading to God for Him to make sense of my life and what I am going through.

I have a really hard time with this. I feel too young to be making big life decisions, but too old for my parents to tell me what to do. I feel too selfish to make choices for anybody else, but also too selfless to only consider myself in my actions and especially in my doings. I feel too independent to be told what to do by anybody, yet way too dependent to be relying on myself.

Well, this is what I know thus far:

I am one big blue-eyed fireball attracted to authenticity, to vulnerability and to other women who use f-bombs in their writing. I wear my heart on my sleeve and care about people and things and items more than I should, but I don’t care. I put myself on the line for what matters to me and I am willing to sacrifice everything I have for what I love.

I enjoy hot over cold, any day. In drinks, in love, in relationships – if it’s not a hot hell yes, it’s a cold no-thanks. I enjoy hot coffee, hot tea, and hot relationships. I prefer a kick in the ass rather than a pat on the back. To get motivated, I like to pretend that I am failing miserably at the task at hand and start from there in order to redeem myself.

I love to sing in my car and in my kitchen. I seem to wake up with a song in my head every single morning. I tend to know precisely 40 percent of the words to any of said songs yet still sing the wrong lyrics loud and passionately. I sing loudly to my boyfriend and to my best friends and to myself. I am not ashamed to say that I am the girl who sings to Taylor Swift around my bedroom, dancing around like the fool I am.

I like words like neat and parched and legit and stoked. I remember birthdays and details and friends’ names and even their dogs’ names. I freak people out by recalling things days and months and years later. I remember the little things that most people forget about the little details from the mundane moments that you already forgot. I love that look on someone’s face when they feel noticed. I like people to remember that I remember. I am a passionate social media creep; if you’re reading this, I probably know what your great aunt Susan looks like from stalking your Facebook page.

I write to process my feelings, to work through my thoughts, and to let the shit go. I think through ink, bleeding my emotion onto journal pages and in sketchbooks and on my Instagram account and my Facebook statuses and in my iPhone notepad. Even in the margins of my Bible. Writing is my emotional throw up. I write, then erase or backspace, process, then write again. Then when I get it right, I click save. But, I might go and delete it later. I write things down and just read it until I hate it. More than half of what I write goes unpublished.

I write to people I know and people I don’t know. I write for people I have met and people I will never met. I write for people who know me and people who have never heard of me. I write for a specific audience but sometimes I only write for myself. I write to get it out of my head and to get it into yours. I write on my computer but I also write letters. I mail actual letters and cards and magazine clippings and photos across the country, just because who doesn’t love surprises in the mail? I love handwriting, but mine is awful. My handwriting looks like jagged circles. I love other people’s awful handwriting because it means they still tried, but I hate mine.

I silently make friends with people I see in public. I observe people; on the bus, walking to class, singing in their cars, and walking through the stores. I think about if they would be someone that would be my friend. I make up our friendship, pretending it exists. I tuck away the pretend stories surrounding the circumstances of the first time we met and replay them in my head when I need a smile. I fall in love with the characters that I write my fiction stories about. I tend to spend a lot of time in my head when writing fiction, and the characters become real to me. I love them and I care about them, and I actually control their destiny. It makes me feel like a god in a way, and I like that control.

I am a survivor. I survived a bad car crash when I was four years old. I survived 18 years of physical, mental, and emotional abuse. I survived five years of self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and mental illness. I survived what I thought would kill me, without killing myself. I survived getting my heart broken. I also survived breaking my own heart two or 10 or 100 times. I am still a work in process.

I watched cancer take my grandpa away from us, quickly and very painfully. I watched him die a little each day, one day at a time, for months. I wrote about it and took photos and videos that I can’t imagine looking at again. I won’t look at them again. The only thing I can stand to remember is the sound of his laughter, his smile of approval, the smell of his cologne, and the way he would drop off blueberry muffins on Saturday mornings.

I am a lover of all things breakfast, especially bacon. I enjoy sharing my food and tasting yours too. I am a picky eater, though. So don’t offer me anything of the color green. Sugar is my favorite spice, and I will eat any fruity candy. I am a girl yet I hate chocolate. You’ll never catch me eating with my hands. It’s germy and messy.

I like to slow way down and savor this life, even though I am a go-go-go person. I enjoy long road trips and slow brunch and long chats over coffee or cocoa and leisurely exploring the mountains. I am a photographer, learner, maker, writer and a doer. I am a daughter, sister, granddaughter, girlfriend, and dog mom. I believe life is better shared – with words, photos and with loved ones nearby.

I am working on figuring out who I am; slowly but surely. But, this is what I know with confidence: I am a child of the one true King, who is not moved by the world. I do not fear for I am His, and He is my heart and soul. I’ve been saved, I’ve been changed, and I have been set free because of what He did on the cross. And out of all the things that could ever define me, I always want this to be the one that sets me apart.